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What is Birda doing to ensure it produces quality data for scientific research?

Birda has spent a lot of time refining the platform in such a way that it produces valuable, quality data for conservation researchers.

John White avatar
Written by John White
Updated over 4 months ago

Birda has spent a lot of time refining the platform in such a way that it produces valuable, quality data for conservation researchers. This is accomplished through a combination of user-centric features as well as background features.

Birda's user-centric features to improve the quality of the sighting data:

  • When adding sighting records, location-based species lists are used to limit species lists to only the species we know to occur at a location.

  • When adding sighting records, location-based species lists are also sorted from most common to least common.

  • Birda's species lists are integrated into the Birda species guide to help users find the correct species when adding sighting records.

  • Birda has a 'Suggest Species' functionality that gets the community involved in identifying and reviewing species posted.

  • Birda's community can flag sightings that are incorrectly identified (or have other issues) so that they can be manually reviewed.

  • Birda is in the process of developing species identification quizzes to track and improve users' species identification skills.

Birda's background features to improve the quality of the sighting data:

  • Birda uses Birdlife International's bird distribution dataset to verify that sightings have occurred within known distributions and flag sightings occurring outside of known distributions.

  • Birda uses location-based species lists (based on over 1bn verified historical sighting records) as further verification that sightings have occurred within or outside of known distributions.

  • Birda is in the process of gauging each user's species identification skills and using this to segregate sightings datasets based on perceived data quality.

  • Birda is partnering with a variety of local ornithological organisations and ornithologists to vet data and validate unusual records.

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